Schumer Floor Remarks On Avoiding A Trump Shutdown, Warning President Trump Not To Intervene In Huawei CFO Arrest, And A Farwell to Senator Heitkamp

December 13, 2018

Washington, D.C. – U.S. Senator Chuck
Schumer today spoke on the Senate floor (at approximately 10:00 a.m.) regarding
President Trump’s options to avoid a partial government shutdown, warming
President Trump not to intervene on China’s behalf in the arrest of the Huawei
CFO and a farewell to Senator Heitkamp. Below are his remarks, which can also
be viewed here:

Madam
President, we have just a little over a week to come to some agreement on how
to fund the government past next Friday. Leader Pelosi and I have given the
president two options to keep the government open. Both are noncontroversial.
Neither contain any Democratic demand. We just want to keep the government
open. So far, President Trump has not accepted either offer.

The
president appears to be clinging to his demand for billions of dollars for a
border wall. And from what we saw in the Oval Office and news reports about his
reaction after our meeting, President Trump is willing to throw a temper
tantrum and shut down the government unless he gets his way.

I
want to be crystal clear: there will not be additional appropriations to pay
for the border wall. It’s done. The President repeatedly promised that Mexico
would pay for his unnecessary and ineffective border wall, in his words: “100
percent.” On Tuesday, he said he would be “proud” to shut down the government,
unless U.S. taxpayers would pay for it. And now, just this morning, the
president tweeted that Mexico will pay for the wall through savings from the
new NAFTA.

Well,
Mr. President: If you say Mexico is going to pay for the wall through NAFTA,
which it certainly won’t, then I guess we don’t have to! Let’s fund the
government.

Honestly,
if the president really believed what he tweeted this morning, that his new
NAFTA would pay for the wall, he wouldn’t be threatening to shut down the
government unless American taxpayers fund his wall. You can’t have it both
ways.

The
president’s position on the wall is totally contradictory, ill-informed, and
frankly irresponsible. It’s not a serious proposal, it’s a throwaway idea the
president used in the campaign and still uses to fire up his base. A Trump
temper tantrum and shutdown threat isn’t going to change any minds here in
Congress.

President
Trump has several ways to avoid a shutdown. He should pick one, and soon. But
if we wind up with a shutdown, it will be entirely the president’s fault.
President Trump himself would not dispute that in the Oval Office Tuesday. He
almost bragged that he would shut down the government. What irresponsibility.

And
I’d just like to remind my friend the Leader that if we arrive at a Trump
shutdown, the onus for reopening the government will soon fall in his lap.

When
Democrats take control of the House in January, Democrats will pass one of our
two options to fund the government, and then Leader McConnell and Senate
Republicans will be left holding the bag for a Trump shutdown if they don’t
pass our bill now.

So
there’s no way for my Republican friends here to avoid this issue. There is no
way for Leader McConnell to avoid the issue, fearful from President Trump as
they all may be. Either Republicans help deal with the president now or they’ll
be left dealing with a much bigger problem in January.

Now,
a brief word on China. I have spent the better of the last two decades
encouraging administrations to be tougher on China, which has risen to
challenge the United States economically not through fair trade and responsible
growth, but by shielding its markets from US competition, flouting
international trade rules against dumping and currency manipulation,
relentlessly stealing our intellectual property and know how. China has not played
by the rules, they are the outlaw of trade. And they have cost the United
States millions of jobs and probably trillions, if not hundreds of billions of
dollars.

The
recent arrest of the CFO of Huawei, a tech giant in China with close ties to
its government and military, is a reminder of the predatory and rapacious
behavior of Chinese companies. Huawei is charged by US officials with
intentionally violating US sanctions with Iran.

Beyond
these specific charges, however, Huawei has raised serious concerns among US
officials for a potential role in cyberespionage, given their reported links to
China’s state security services. And now news reports have confirmed that the
massive cyberattack on the Marriott hotel chain a few weeks ago was conducted
by no other than Chinese intelligence.

Now
this administration has been tougher on China than previous administrations.
They deserve credit on that. But it has also shown an eagerness to quickly
bargain away tough enforcement of Chinese abuses for mild and sometimes
meaningless “concessions.” So that President Trump can get a quick news hit,
particularly on a bad day. That was the story of ZTE. No one wants to see
a repeat of that movie. We had ZTE dead to rights, they were hurting America
and President Trump at the last minute still unexplained said, “let them off
the hook.” I hope that doesn’t happen here again. Because this administration
has set us up for a potential victory for the first time -- better than Bush’s
administration, better than Obama’s administration -- against China’s
rapaciousness.

So I’m urging
the president not to intervene on China’s behalf with US officials who are
prosecuting these serious charges. We should have the Huawei CFO stand trial
here in the United States. as she deserves.

Now
finally, about my dear friend – the Senator from North Dakota. The task sadly
falls to me now to begin saying goodbye to members of our caucus who will not
be returning in the 116th Congress. And this morning, I’d like to begin with
the junior senator from North Dakota.

Heidi
Heitkamp had a childhood that sounds like it was ripped from the pages of a
frontier epic. She grew up one of seven kids born over nine years, in a house
with three bedrooms, and in town with a population south of 100. Do the math.
That means around 1/10th of the town were Heitkamps.

Inside
the household, the lack of space meant that Heidi’s room was also her brother’s
room and also the laundry room. According to her sisters, the presence of the
laundry machine had almost no effect on her. She’d read and read and read and
rarely, if ever, did she participate in the washing or folding of the Heitkamp
laundry.

Her
siblings didn’t seem to mind, at least not too much. As Julie Heitkamp said
about growing up with Heidi, “She was so good…it was annoying.”

Turned
out that bookworm from a small town in North Dakota was destined for great
things. When she worked for Senator Kent Conrad, the outstanding Democrat from
North Dakota, he recognized the same goodness in Heidi that her sisters
recognized. And he encouraged her to run for state auditor at the age of 28.
She didn’t win that race, but she ran again for State Tax Commission, and won,
and again for Attorney General, and won, fighting on behalf of sexual assault
survivors and against the abusive practices of the tobacco industry. She’d run
for governor and eventually Senate, losing the first but winning the second,
becoming the first woman ever elected to the Senate from the state of North
Dakota.

For
someone who came from where Heidi came from, that election might have felt like
a culmination. But no, for Heidi it was just the beginning. It wasn’t about
winning or even beating the odds, it was about what you did with the time you
had while you’re here. As Heidi talked about in her farewell speech, the thing
that’s important is how we use our time.

Let
the history books report just how well the Senator from North Dakota used her
time while she was here. Heidi was able to bring Republicans and Democrats
together during a time of extraordinary partisan divisions, one of the few that
could do it so successfully on such major issues. It was because she understood
how each side saw an issue, what each side wanted, and what a compromise could
look like. And once she knew an agreement was possible – she’d work like no
other to see that it was achieved.

That’s
how she got Senator Whitehouse and Senator McConnell on the same energy bill
having to do with carbon capture – a remarkable feat – a staunch
environmentalist who gives speeches on the floor everyday about green issues
and a Senator from a coal state who defends that industry.

That’s
how she created the first amber alert in Indian Country with our dearly
departed friend Senator John McCain.

That’s
how she helped shut down “Back Page” and child sex trafficking on the internet
with broad bipartisan support. What a great legacy, and all of it was
bipartisan.

That
instinct for compromise and consensus was born from her life experience. In her
family of nine, Heidi was known as “the arbitrator.” Even her name is a
compromise. Born Mary Kathryn, Heidi became “Heidi” because there was a Mary
and a Kathryn in her grade school class – so she gladly accepted a nickname.

Of
course, there were times Heidi couldn’t bring our two sides together on an
issue…because she was already further along than both sides. Senator Heitkamp
was the first to really drive home the plight of Native American women, here in
the Senate. She worked at it tirelessly, because she believed that if people
knew about the poverty and abuse and addiction that plague many reservations,
and how they affected both men and women, they’d be up in arms about it.

So
she wrote the first bill to create a commission on Native American children,
who suffer from rates of poverty, malnutrition, and educational disparities far
above other populations. A little while ago it became law and received funding.
Recently it had its first meeting. A legacy that will live on.

She
also wrote Savannah’s Act to address the epidemic of missing and murdered
Native American women. It passed the Senate unanimously just a few weeks after
the election.

Well,
Heidi, the Senate is catching up to you, and we intend to use the time that we
have to build on the incredible legacy you leave on these issues. And just so
I’ll never forget what your service has meant in this chamber, I will always
keep a picture of 3 of the Heitkamp sisters on the wall of my office – all with
their high North Dakota cheekbones -- it’s going to stay there to be a reminder
of what Heidi has done and I’m sure she would say more importantly, a reminder
of the many things we still have to do to continue the great legacy that she
has left..

Those
of us on this side of the aisle will miss her cornbread, at least I will, her
insistence on corona beer, and her ability to suffer even the worst mimicked
Fargo accents as I sometimes attempted to do. And all of us in this chamber
will sure miss the junior senator from North Dakota, her warmth, her passion,
her sincerity, her political courage.

We
owe a debt of gratitude to her husband Darwin and her children Ali and Nathan
for borrowing Heidi for these years, and we wish them all the best as well.